The SourceForge Controversy, and the Ongoing Fall of Slashdot Media, Explained
Over the past few days, one of the world’s premier download portals has been in the middle of a controversy. SourceForge, renowned for hosting open-source programs and free software, was attacked for allegedly misleading its users. Then its sister company, web news aggregator Slashdot, was attacked for seemingly hiding these allegations. It’s the latest chapter in the decline of Slashdot, once an important corner of the web.
SourceForge has historically been loved by developers for its support of open-source software. However, the software repository has recently started a practice that has met with the ire of developers everywhere, particularly GIMP, everyone’s favorite free open-source image editor.
If you tried to download the GIMP installer for Windows, you would expect to get only GIMP, right? Well, SourceForge has recently started bundling other software as part of the installer file, which can trick non-tech-savvy users into downloading and installing programs they did not intend to.
